AG meets with city lawyers, pushes for cameras

While the province shares concern about access to legal aid for the poor, Attorney General Mike de Jong said there is no more provincial money.

De Jong was in Kamloops Tuesday meeting with local lawyers on the closure of the Legal Services Society office as well as other issues.

“Everyone understands there are limited resources. The question is how do we maximize the benefit to the people who need it the most?”

The province is operating under a $1.7-billion budget deficit.

The Legal Services Society, which operates arms-length of government, made a cost-cutting decision to close legal aid offices here and in other B.C. communities. While its income from the province is stable it has suffered from a loss of income from trusts that are no longer enjoying high interest rates.

Critics, including the NDP Opposition, say the Liberals cut the legal aid budget by 40 per cent when they took office in 2002 and are demanding it be replaced.

Local defence lawyers withdrew services to legal aid to protest the office closure. The Elizabeth Fry Society will be the contract agency for legal aid services in Kamloops, although legal aid referrals will still be handled in private law offices.

David Dundee, a Kamloops family lawyer, called the discussion with de Jong “encouraging” because he acknowledged legal aid is underfunded and opened up the idea of alternative funding.

But local criminal and family lawyers are also unhappy with the operations of the Legal Services Society.

“It’s how it’s spent. Many of us are dismayed at the Legal Services Society.”

Dundee said the society has not been open with its accounting and many are questioning office centralization in Vancouver, with help to the poor by phone.

De Jong said he is encouraging study by lawyers into alternative sources of revenue. Discussions are underway with the provincial wing of the Canadian Bar Association.

“Today we agreed we should work together to identify those options.”

The Attorney General said he agrees with defence lawyers that the cost of representing people of limited means, whether in criminal or family court, “has only gone up over the past decade.”

De Jong, a lawyer and a veteran of the Gordon Campbell cabinet, said he also wants to move to make courts more open to people. Two of those ways include making it easier for lay people to obtain court documents, for example, as well as experimenting with allowing cameras in the courtroom.

“It belongs to the people. They finance and pay for it through their taxes. We make it incredibly difficult for them to see what goes on in the courtroom.”

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